175 is too big a target

Well he moment a score of 175 is put up on the board, 99% of the time, it should be understood that the team wins and the case was no different yesterday in the match between the Deccan Chargers and Royal Challengers Bangalore. Very rarely do we come across games where 175 gets chased down like it happened the other day between Chennai and Punjab, with the Kings XI Punjab team grabbing it all in style. However, unlike Delhi, Deccan Chargers should be appreciated for not making a blunder at home soil losing both games in the very first week of their play.

Starting with the Deccan Chargers' innings where the players who took to the crease made double digit figures and with some Barat Chipili scoring the only half century of the Deccan Chargers' innings when he scored an unbeaten 61 off just 35 balls, a respectable target for the Royal Challengers Bangalore was always on the cards. This is how a team has to go on with all or at least most of their batsmen making it big or at least not small. This can happen very rarely with the very next innings of the Royal Challengers Bangalore being a best example for a lack of the same.

The only notable scores regarding the Royal Challengers Bangalore was an unbeaten 71 runs from the blades of Virat Kohli followed by a quarter century (in case that can be called so) Cheteshwar Poojara and last but not the least we have the opener Mayank Agarwal who scored 16 runs no matter how much balls he took to do the same. However, Royal Challengers Bangalore supporters have a reason to smile as the highest individual scorer of the match happened to be Virat Kohli with his 71 being 10 runs greater than what Chilipi could manage. Had there been an award for the highest run scorer in a match then Kohli would have had a run.

The scorecard suggests a perfect 5 from the Deccan Chargers with all five bowlers from the side bowling their full quota of 4 overs each. One need not confuse this to be because of the huge total that they put up. Instead, the Deccan Chargers never had depth of any sort in their bowling department which forced them to go in for just 5 bowlers as mentioned. Howevrer, a bowlerless Deccan Chargers' team had a rare gem in their crown with Dale Steyn being the pick of the bowlers with both teams put together. But, the tenth wicket of the Bangalore team never fell highlighting that the Hyderabad team has to keep an eye on their bowling.

Vow! From Position 8 To Position 3-RCB

This regarding the Royal Challengers Bangalore, I just can say that is a miracle and nothing else. Might be because as I have stated in one of my earlier posts, might be due to the change in the number behind the T-Shirt of the Royal Challengers' captain Anil Kumble. However, forget about making it to the semis, it would have been a sigh of relief for the franchisee of the Royal Challengers Vijay Mallya in case the Royal Challengers didn't finish at the bottom of the table. Thanks to the Kolkata Knight Riders who made that spot theirs. At one stage of the tournament, the RCB saw themselves at position number 8.

And look what they are at present!!! Position number 3. OMG! This is just unbelievable. The Royal Challengers have shown us how to make 8 into 3. I remember in my school days where I had scored 13 out of 25 marks in a test and had to go for unfair means to make that score of 13 as 18. And I did it by stretching the curves at the left end which makes 3 look like 8. But, until the Royal Challengers jumped from position 8 to position 3 in the points table, I was unaware as to how to make 8 as 3. For, it is not easy to rub off the extra curves in an attempt to make it number 3.

And the RCB can also boast of having the only Indian and the second player in the tournament to have scored a century though Suresh Raina of the CSK came close to that score when he scored 98. Adding to that was the fact that he is the youngest player to do so and also this is the highest score made in this particular tournament. Despite the 114 runs scored by Manish Pandey, the RCB settled for a score of just 170 losing just 4 wickets. Cooool! This is not the case of the KKR where they neither lose wickets nor put up a mammoth total on the board.

It had to take the RCB franchisee-Vijay Mallya the tour of England over the West Indies to inevitably go in for Anil Kumble to captain the team and this really worked out well. Just imagine had the England players been available for the entire tournament like the players from New Zealand and South Africa were available? Then, still Kevin Pietersen would have captained the side and continuing the good work he was doing until then. Losing matches and helping the betters not to bet on RCB. If not for Gibbs, none of the Hyderabad players really stood upto the challenge. But, still, their partly contribution could bring them close to the score of 170 despite losing the match by 12 runs.

The day however belongs to Manish Pandey, for if not for his dominance with the bat, the score of 170 would not have been possible and thanks to the drop catch when Manish was on 2.